A Shifty Universe, Truth that Sometimes Lies

I’m going to try to do more linking to other people’s blogs instead of jamming them with my comments. It seems better in lots of ways. So here I go.

A conversation I had yesterday and two blogs I’m reading have today reminded me of a couple of core convictions. By the way, these blogs are excellent, so I encourage you to explore beyond the posts I cite.

A commenter on June’s blog, a teacher, points out the paradox of grammar: that one first learns its rules, then how to bend them. I’ve decided, after several (not an enormous number, but more than a few) years on the planet that that’s one of life’s most important themes. I can think of no field in which it does not apply. At every point of revelation, some “truth” we’d been taught to get to that point is exploded by another or simply dissolves in its own insubstantiality.

That doesn’t mean it all dissolves, that there’s nothing substantial or absolute, but mostly perhaps that our plight is one of perpetual misunderstanding, of partial glimpses, of hints and guesses and approximations. And, really, that stuff itself (both our own concoctions and the world and order that exist to varying degrees independent of us–material and otherwise) is more or less, if not flimsy, at least shifting. Moreover, in a way that perhaps transcends or precedes (experientially) the universe’s shiftiness, there is perhaps a necessity that we learn lies or half truths on the way to understanding.

I do believe in absolutes, in Truth. I’ve experienced a bit of it. But it doesn’t come in a pill or a package. Of course, even that’s a lie. Truth is quite capable of sneaking up in a capsule or neatly wrapped container–but eventually, it’s gonna bust out. We learn lies on the way to truth because so much of learning is the acquisition of definitions, definitions are boxes, and gloriously, thankfully, Reality won’t fit in any box, no matter how elaborate and vast we might make it.

God, the world and we ourselves are fundamentally fraught with Mystery–Hallelujah!

Yes, that’s frustrating. Yes, I am continually aggravated by certain things I never quite comprehend but still somehow feel that I must. But there is greatness in surprise and hope and beauty that doesn’t sit nicely in my head or my heart but is always ever tugging at the seams.

6 comments

great thoughts Joel. I especially liked the idea of learning all the rules, then learning how to bend them. So true. The best umpires in baseball aren’t “by the book” buy they are very skilled interpreters.

I love this idea. And it makes it all the more painful that I think, in my case, it’s compounded by the plight that I”m certain my plight is OTHER PEOPLE’S perpetual misunderstand. Oy. I have a lotta work to do.

Your use of the term “interpret” reminds me of Midrash, which I am sure to blog about later. I like the idea that everything since the Torah–not just the Prophets and other Writings, the Gospels, Epistles and Apocalypse, but Jesus and the Church herself (and anything good in the broader culture)–is all one big, multi-branched, Midrash, meant to bring out and bring texture to the Revelation, even, really, an opportunity for us to co-create the Divine Law–but that’s probably heresy, so don’t tell anyone I said it.

June: Thanks for stopping over and saying good things. You’re easily my most famous commenter, at least so far. Whoever doesn’t know who June is should not only check out her blog, but buy her books, as well. Really, they’re brilliant–both useful and entertaining.

Sorry for that commercial (and I hope it wasn’t too lame). As for your concluding comment, I think we’ve all got job security. Most of us probably don’t realize it. Makes me think of that old saying (I always mangle these but it’s probably more fun than getting them right), goes something like “with all the stuff I still have left to do, at this rate, I’ll never die.”

“Great Divorce”? Its a CS Lewis book where some people get on a train (?) and go to a place (??) where they realize that they themselves have become wispy and translucent though the world around them stayed actual so that an apple falling from a tree onto one of their cute little punkin heads could destroy them.

The details are fuzzy because I have not read the book (I’m lazy), I’ve just heard somebody talk about it, but I think it gives insight as to why truth seems such an elusive thing to get our hands around. Its as if Truth (the capital “T” is important) is a tiny book, a line even, or maybe just a word that was written/spoken in another world, to make sense in another place that we would not recognize and the concrete of our plane is merely a reflection of that other place. It does well to explain apparent inconsistencies. Places where our hearts just don’t seem to jive with the universe.

I like the idea of bending grammar too, but what I’m guilty of is probably considered a form of rape in most academic circles. I’m such a rebel. A literary renegade. I should get a tattoo.

Yes, it is “The Great Divorce,” which initially pissed me off (when I first read it yea those decades ago), because it is, at least on a couple of levels, a snarky, self-professed response to Blake’s brilliant and vastly superior “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” Hmmm, in The Divorce’s idiom, we might say that The Marriage is substantial in a heavenly way, whereas The Divorce is only on the upper levels of earthly substantiality. That’d be my (correct) opinion; you’re welcome to disagree. People have; I’m used to others being wrong.

That having been said, I’ve developed an affection, appreciation and respect for The Great Divorce, even for all of its and Lewis’s inferiority. Indeed, I don’t think I’m pissed at Clive for dissing Bill any more, in case anyone cares. I still think he was an idiot to do it–at least the way he did; but see the last sentence of the first paragraph of this comment.

I’m mostly kidding with the arrogance, btw. I do think other people are idiots, but mostly I think they’re less idiotic than I.

TGD does get to a good bit of it (damn, it took me forever to say that, didn’t it?). I’ve commented elsewhere lately that I think my perpetual frustration is a direct reflection of my belief and hope in and desire for substantiality. I think we have to continue yearning for that substance to break in, because I think that it does and I think that’s part of what’s meant by the Kingdom. Which I think is what you’re getting at too. Flatland, Allegory of the Cave et al.

Another thing I like about TGD is this idea that the reprobate intuitively fall into distance and disgruntledness with their fellow humans and with God. Lewis almost suggests (though, please, you who are concerned about these things: I know it’s a parable that maybe shouldn’t be overly extrapolated) that we create our own Hell. I largely agree with that.

As far as your bending of grammar: in my experience you bend it better that most conform to it, so I’d willingly grant you that license or absolution or whatever. You should get a tattoo. Indeed, you’ve planted the idea in my head that I should get some kind of badass verbonator tattoo. We might should plan it for some time when you’re in town. It’d have to be good, though–express something more dangerous than my propensity to frequently and flagrantly split infinitives.

God, I love words. I’ve explained to you, haven’t I, that I married a woman whose name is essentially the Hebrew feminine form of “word”? And I didn’t fully realize it until after we were married. Ah, words–are they not that medium through which the LORD quite (most?) often breaks through that filmy membrane and brings, in the breaking, a solidity to this ephemeral place?

And–what with the rape imagery and all–you remind me of Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV, one of the greats. Even so, maranatha.